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 Color Hues #137


Jules has chosen one of my all-time favorite color combinations for the new Color Hues Challenge: 


I have to thank teammate, Stef Perry, for the inspiration for this card. For our May 1st Color Hues Challenge, she posted a card with the Spellbinder Block Accent Arches. I immediately fell in love with them. It was part of a Spellbinder’s kit, and the arches were already out of stock. I put myself on the wait list, and when they finally arrived, I knew I would use them for this challenge. For the centerpiece, I’ll pulled out an old favorite from The Greetery, Best Bouquet Detals die. I have to say, I love how it all came together.


I die cut the leaves and guide for arranging the florals in black, adding flowers that I die cut and assembled from several hues of red cardstock found in my scraps bin. Then I die cut four floral pieces in metallic gold. 


The original gold berries were too intense for the arrangement so I die cut one in red and slightly offset the gold. Much better. Not long ago I spent an afternoon with my foiling machine, so the Spellbinder’s Fancy Sentiment Strips banner was all set to go, foiled in gold on black. 


The Color Hues Blog is showcasing some fabulous cards by our Design Team and our Guest Designers, Joanne James and Julia Aston. I hope you’ll find some inspiration there and join us in the gallery. 

Color Hues #136

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The new Color Hues Challenge is live with an elegant color combination, chosen by Julie:


One category of cards I never have on hand when I need them are sympathy cards, and this beautiful combination seemed perfect for one. 


I pulled out two much older, and neglected, products: Papertrey Ink’s beautiful die cut butterfly from the Life is Beautiful set, and Gina K’s wonderful embossing folder, Tapestry. I die cut the shadow for the butterfly and the panel for the embossing folder from Simon Says Cream cardstock. The detailed butterfly was die cut from metallic gold, and then from black. I snipped the body and antenna from the black and added it to the gold butterfly.


After embossing the smaller panel, I added it to a cream card base and attached the butterfly at a slight angle with some dimensional tape. The sentiment, gold foiled on black, is from Spellbinder’s You Are Everything set. A CAS card with lots of elegance thanks to the detailed embossing folder. 

The Color Hues Blog is showcasing some fabulous cards by our Design Team. I hope you’ll find some inspiration there and join us in the gallery. 

This is a perfect card for the Neglected Stuff Challenge, so I’m sending it over for the July challenge.

Color Hues 135

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Carol has chosen the new colors for the 135th Color Hues.Challenge:

I purchased the Spellbinders Sunflower Serenade last summer but have never used it. I wanted a Clean and Simple card and it was just perfect. I die cut it from yellow cardstock and added some ink blending to the middle of the flower before adding the centers in two shades of brown (one of our acceptable neutrals.) 


Two squares were cut with Ellen Hutson’s Essential Squares. A slightly smaller one from My Favorite Things Black and White Basics paper pack and one size larger from black cardstock. I miss MFT; their patterned paper packs are one of my favorites. After layering those onto a white card base, I added the sunflower with a square of dimensional tape. 


The sentiment is one of Memory Boxes Gold Foiled Greeting Tabs. After adding the greeting, I wanted some gold with the sunflower. I tried a couple gold leaves, but they were too much, so I went with my favorite Pinkfresh Studio gold pearls.


Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your visit and your comments as well! I hope you’ll hop over to the Color Hues Challenge blog to check out the fabulous designs created by our team and our Guest Designers, Barbara Campbell and Diana K. We would love to see you add a card to our gallery. It’s open until 9:00 am on June 29th.  

This card is off to Darnell’s NBUS and to the A Cut Above Challenge—Anything Goes with a die cut.

Two for Color Hues #134

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Bonnie has chose Pink and Turquoise for this first of June Color Hues Challenge:

Although I had a few Ideas for this color combo, after I made my first card with The Greetery’s new Pretty Picado suite, I realized it was perfect for a two color challenge. And, due to a slight error in embossing one of the panels, I ended up with two cards! One is a traditional A2 card, and the other is a shaped card. I chose a darker hue of turquoise than in the challenge image above.


I used the Pretty Picado die and Capsule Basics on both cards. On the A2 card I stamped and die cut the greeting with the Pretty Picado stamp and die.


The white die cut fits over a turquoise panel that was run through the Pretty Picado Embossing Folder.


That’s where the second card got its start–I didn’t line the die cut panel up exactly with the embossed panel so had to redo it. There was nothing inherently wrong, however, with the first die cut panel. The Pretty Picado Cutaway die cuts a gorgeous sentiment that perfectly fits in the white oval. It was layered on an oval of turquoise paper.


I used one of the dies from Capsule Basics to create a scalloped oval card base, and added the white panel on the front. Finally, I die cut a pink border with the Capsule Basic Small Fixed Border and die cut the pretty open pattern from the Pretty Picado die. I added a few pink pearls from Memory Box that have been in my stash for years.


Thanks to a generous gift for Mother’s Day I was able to purchase quite a few of the products from The Greetery’s Fête and Fiesta release that just happened to land on my birthday! I’m already having a lot of fun with them–and have so many more cards I want to create.

Be sure to stop by the Color Hues Challenge to check out all the fabulous designs created by the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Kim Miller.

I’m posting one of these on the new Paper Players TicTacToe Challenge, using the diagonal from lower left to upper right: happy sentiment, free, die cut.

Color Hues #133

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Tracey is our hostess for the mid-May Color Hues Challenge, and she chose a color combo just perfect for my new Spellbinder’s pansy dies.


Spellbinder’s Pansy Seed Co. was April’s Small Die of the Month selection. I’m not a long-term member of the Spellbinder Clubs, but occasionally I join in order to get a die I want. That was true in March (that die is being saved for a granddaughter’s birthday in the fall,) so I was already a member and loved the pansies.

Spellbinder’s Pansy Seed Co. was April’s Small Die of the Month selection. I’m not a long-term member of the Spellbinder Clubs, but occasionally I join in order to get a die I want. That was true in March (that die is being saved for a granddaughter’s birthday in the fall) so I was already a member and loved the pansies.


I die cut all the pieces for the pansies and leaves from Bristol cardstock and ink blended them with finger daubers. Once they were assembled, I went looking for a container and came upon The Greetery’s Seagrass Basket. It was die cut from Papertrey Ink’s Weathervane and Dark Chocolate cardstocks. I added tiny little metal brads to attach the handle after weaving the pieces of the basket together. 


Altenew’s Organic Linen 3-D Embossing Folder was lying on my table. It, too, is a new product and hadn’t even been put away, so I ran a piece of Simon Says Slate cardstock through it and attached it to a card base of the same color. After adding the basket to the card front, I arranged the pansies and leaves. The sentiment, from Pinkfresh Studio’s Beyond Happy, is gold embossed to pick up on the gold paper I used for the center of the pansies. I die cut two extras and layered them to give the sentiment a bit of dimension.

This is such a fun color combo, I hope you’ll join us in the gallery. It’s open until May 29th at 9:00 am so you have lots of time! If you’re looking for inspiration, check out the wonderful cards by the Design Team,

I’m sending this one to three challenges: The Four Seasons Challenge: Spring–pansies are one flower that can withstand our fluctuating temperatures, A Cut Above (Anything Goes for die cuts) and NBUS since the Pansy Seed Co. is new to me.

Color Hues #132

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It’s May 1st, and I’m always glad to see this turn of the calendar. In western New York, you can be pretty sure Spring will finally make an appearance and stay put. Stef has chosen a very springy color combination for our new Color Hues Challenge: Yellow and Blue.


While I was hunting for an embossing folder to use on another card, I came across the Altenew 3D Embossing Folder, Fragrant Florals. It’s been awhile since I stenciled an embossed design. I’m happy with the end result, but it was a bit more involved than I anticipated. Because I wanted two colors, it was necessary to do a lot of masking. This card represents the third attempt to get a clean result. I added some white gel pen to the floral centers to make them stand out a bit.


I pulled out two shades of blue, yellow and gray inks to color and shade the florals and leaves. I cut down the embossed panel in order to have a narrow mid-gray frame on a dark gray card base. The sentiment is gold foiled with Spellbinder’s You Are Everything Sentiments which fit in perfectly with the florals. I added a few gold pearls as a final accent.


Please hop over to the Color Hues Blog to see the variety of cards by my very talented teammates, and our Guest Designer, Greta! Then I hope you’ll head for your crafting table, and add a card to our gallery.

Color Hues 131

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Sheri is the hostess for the mid-April Color Hues Challenge and she’s chosen Coral and Green.

The first time coral appeared in one of our challenges, I had to do some research and some hunting through my supplies to find papers and inks that are coral. This time I had no hesitation, and I actually started with the design of the card in mind before choosing the stamp set.

It’s been awhile since I used Pinkfresh Studio’s Darling Dahlias stamp set, but it worked perfectly. I used the stencils to color it with a combination of Pinkfresh and Papertrey Ink inks. I tend to have a heavy had when it comes to ink blending, but have discovered that using the large Pinkfresh Studio blending brushes and standing up while applying the ink made it much easier to get the look I wanted. 


After cutting the coral cardstock panels with two sizes of Ellen Hutson’s Essential Rectangles, I die cut an oval from the same series in the middle of the smaller panel. I adhered the stamped piece behind the oval opening.  The dies in these sets cut the shape as well as a narrow frame. I die cut two so I could glue two frames together to provide a bit of dimension. That panel was added to the card base with dimensional foam. Finally, I added a gold foiled sentiment from Spellbinder’s Curved Everyday Greetings. 


I hope you’ll join us in the gallery for this pretty color combination. Be sure to check the Color Hues Blog for lots of inspiration from our Guest Designer, Kelly, and the always creative Design Team.

Color Hues #130

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Nancy’s the hostess for this new Color Hues Challenge. She chose Fuchsia and Navy. I knew exactly what I wanted to create with this color combination.


I couldn’t resist purchasing the Spellbinder’s January Small Die of the Month, Sunny Stems. I’ve held off using it until now because I thought it would work perfectly with this color combination, and I’m not disappointed.


I die cut two of the shapes to create a navy card base. Then I cut all the “petals” and added them to the card front with dimensional tape after adding some ink blending to the bottom of each. I die cut the half circle for the sentiment and ink blended it as well before white embossing the sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio’s Butterfly Garden. I love the font of the sentiment, and “hello” is general enough to use for a variety of occasions—determined by the inside greeting. I’m holding off on that for now. I added it to the card front with dimensional tape as well. 

For once, I carefully planned how to use the two hues of fuchsia cardstock (one from The Stamp Market and the other from Paper Source) and white cardstock before die cutting all the pieces to create the flowers. I chose a light gray for the stems and leaves and added some ink blending to each of those as well. For the large middle floral, I ink blended the bottom portion of the flower with some fuchsia ink to darken it a bit. The flowers turned out to be easier to assemble than I thought.

I hope this color combo inspires you to create a card to add to our gallery. Before you head to your crafting table, be sure to check out all the inspiration on the Color Hues Blog from my very creative Design Team members. 

I’m sending this off to Darnell’s NBUS gallery—sure to be one of the early entries in the April collection. 

Color Hues #129

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The new Color Hues Challenge is live, and it’s a good one. Marcia has chose Purple and Marigold.


Once again, it’s not a color combo I would have gone to, but I loved working with it. I pulled out an older favorite from Concord and 9th: Paper Posies. The set comes with dies as well as an embossing folder for some of the blooms. I used that on just one of the flowers.

I got a gift certificate for Christmas for Spellbinders and one of the dies I purchased is Stitched Edge Circle Backgrounds die. I’ve seen a number of cards using these dies and was quite sure it would work for this challenge.

The circle was die cut from white cardstock and added to a white card base. I did cut the flowers from colored cardstock and the leaves from a heavy vellum and arranged them around the left edge of the circle. The beautiful gold foiled sentiment is from Spellbinders You Are Everything and was a perfect fit. 


You’ll find lots of inspiration on the Color Hues Blog from my talented Design Team members and Guest Designer, Chris.

Color Hues 128

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It’s my turn to be the hostess for the new Color Hues Challenge. I have to admit my choice of Green and Gold was somewhat selfish since my husband has a St. Patrick’s Day birthday,


In the past, I’ve created birthday cards with a shamrock theme, but this year, I pulled out an older cover plate die from Pinkfresh Studio, Geo Tiles. I die cut the coverplate in metallic gold and adhered it to a bright green card base. 


Once that was done, I decided it needed some more interest, so I inlaid a few of the gold diamonds and added a few black pearls. The foiled sentiment from Ellen Hutson’s Birthday Vibes was conveniently found in my stash of prepared sentiments. 


I hope you’ll find some fun ways to create with this color combination, and join me, the Design Team, and our Guest Designers, Darnell Knauss and Donna Phelan, by adding a card (or two) to our gallery!

Color Hues # 127

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Jules has chosen Peach and Teal for our mid-February Color Hues Challenge.

After being buried in snow this winter, these spring colors shouted “florals” to me. I pulled out another NBUS floral stamp, Charming Bouquet, from Altenew was sent to me last year as a thank you. It included dies for the floral bouquet as well as the sentiments. Such a nice gift!


I decided to do some watercoloring, so stamped and embossed the design onto ArtPop watercolor paper. I love the texture of this paper, and use it for card bases as well as for watercoloring. I used a mixture of Zig Clean Color Brush markers and Tomboy markers with a damp brush in order to get the hues of peach and teal I wanted. I also used light and medium gray markers as a neutral.

After watercoloring and die cutting the florals, I used a card design I saw on Michele Short’s blog some time ago. I die cut two of the Pinkfresh Studio Nested Hexagon Blanket Stitch dies and glued them together for some dimension. Then I arranged the florals, adding dimensional tape where needed. I also used dimensional tape to adhere the die cut sentiment (from Charming Bouquet.) When I went hunting for some embellishments, I was delighted to find some peach jewels by Pinkfresh Studio. 

As always, you’ll find plenty of inspiration on the Color Hues Challenge blog from my talented Design Team members as well as our Guest Designer, Gundi.

Color Hues 126

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When Julie picked Red and Pink for our new Color Hues Challenge, I couldn’t resist making a valentine.

I was given a gift certificate for The Stamp Market for my birthday in May, and I finally put it to use in November. One of the products I ordered was the Checkered Cover die. It doesn’t have a cut line around the edge, so I ended up doing a dry embossed panel in white so it would be easier lay out the red and pink squares in a pleasing pattern. It worked surprisingly well. 

After I adhered all the squares to the embossed panel, I added white hearts cut from Simon Says Tic Tac Toe Hearts die to five of the squares. I wanted a bit of sparkle and added the smallest of the Iridescent Dew Drops from Pinkfresh Studio to the center of the hearts. 

The sentiment is also from Simon Says: Love. When I pulled out the die I was delighted to find both the white word and the black shadow already die cut. Finally, I added the whole panel to a top-folding white card base.

It goes without saying that you’ll find plenty of inspiration on the Color Hues Challenge blog from my talented Design Team members as well as our Guest Designer, JoAnn. The challenge is open until January 14th.

I’m sending this valentine off to the Festive Friday Challenge, choosing pink, hearts, a love sentiment, and hearts from the list. And also to Claire’s “Love is in the Air” Challenge at The Paper Players,

Color Hues #125

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Carol has a fresh and clean color combination for the next Color Hues Challenge — perfect for winter crafting.

Both of my cards came about rather serendipitously. I had an embossed image from my brand new Greetery Shortbread Shapes: Snowflake and several die cut snowflakes from Simon Says laying on my desk along with some Enchanted Evening cardstock, and this color combination came to mind. 

I decided on a square format for the beautiful embossed snowflake panel. I couldn’t bring myself to add a sentiment which would have covered up some of that wonderful detail. I added some blue jewels from Pinkfresh studio, and it was done. It’s likely to be a birthday card for a friend’s January birthday.

It had been a long time since I made a mini-slimline card. I embossed just the front panel with Spellbinders Nordic Noel embossing folder. The snowflake, one of my favorites, was part of a kit from Simon Says a few years ago, the Eliza Snowflake. 

The sentiment is from a Papertrey Ink set I purchased last year, and have never used before: Just Sentiments: Warmth. 

We have the talented Bobby as our Guest Designer. Please check out her wonderful card as well as those of the Color Hues Design Team. The challenge will be open until 9:00 am on January 29th.

It’s been awhile since I played along with the Colorful Options Challenge, but January’s is blues and white so off goes these cards.

Color Hues #124

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Bonnie chose one of my favorite color combos for this first Color Hues Challenge of 2026:

The challenge gave me the perfect opportunity to use some newly acquired Greetery products, some of which I had passed up when they were released. When The Greetery had their annual sale, I snapped them up. No regrets, and I have lots of ideas for these and others in my newly acquired stash.

When I passed on the Capsule Basics suite of products, I knew I’d eventually purchase them, but when the coordinating Rosemal product suite was released, I thought those products was too elaborate so passed on them as well. But after I admired project after project created with them, I changed my mind. I finally settled on a select few dies (skipping the stamps) and this stunning embossing folder. 

Limiting myself to hues of red and gray with some silver metallic turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. The first few die cuts of the leaves and vines went into the trash. I’m happy with the end result, and although this is a bit more elaborate than my usual CAS style, I’m looking forward to playing with these dies and embossing folders again.

This card uses the Rosemal Reflection Jumbo die, the Capsule Basics die, the Capsule Filagree Borders and that stunning embossing folder. It turned out to be quite easy to cut the red and dark gray ovals and then fit them into the embossing folder. Betsy Veldman is a “designer extraordinaire.”

I didn’t purchase the banner die and sentiment set released with this suite, so had to find a sentiment that fit with the design. Pinkfresh Studio came to the rescue with a sentiment and die from their Best Wishes suite of products. 

As always, there’s lots of inspiration on the Color Hues blog from the DT and our talented guests, Lisa Elton and Barb F.

Color Hues #123

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Tracey has chosen a very versatile color duo for this month’s Color Hues Challenge:

I have two wildly different cards to share that showcase these colors versatility. Both cards were created with the new Pinkfresh Studio products released in October. Not many companies offer a prize of the whole release, but PFS does every month. I was the lucky recipient of October’s amazing prize. 

The first card is the more traditional one and the one I posted on the challenge site. The new products I used are two that I had put on my wish list before I knew I’d won a prize. I love the elegant and beautiful Freesia Flourish. The product suite included a stamp, a die, a stencil, and press plate. I used the press plate to foil the image and the sentiment in gold and colored  the freesia with PFS inks using the stencil. 

Next I die cut the Diamond Lattice Coverplate in white and created the oval with an older PFS Nested Elongated Ovals die. I used the Nested Elongated Ovals Blanket Stitch to create a frame. I mounted it on a pale gray card base and added the floral and the sentiment with dimensional tape. Three pale pink Essential Jewels from PFS finished the card.

Here’s another close-up that shows the pretty foiling.

The next card is super bright and fun. I die cut the new Octagon Grid Coverplate three times: once each in black, green and pink. Then I added the green layer to a black card base and paper pieced the pink and the narrow black frame back into the die. I also added the four diamond shapes in black.

The sentiment is from an earlier PFS release, You Are My Rainbow. I die cut a stitched rectangle with Simon Says Stitched Rectangles and trimmed the sentiment piece to fit. I added four black jewels to this card.

You’ll find lots more inspiration on the Color Hues blog. There’s just one challenge for the month of December so you have lots of time to play along!

I’m planning to add the second card to the December Pinkfresh Studio Challenge which is always Anything Goes. That’s good because they’re looking for Christmas cards this month!